Planet-F1

Team-Mate Wars: Spain

Friday 2nd May 2008

In an F1 team, the most important person to beat is your team-mate.

Ferrari
Season: Raikkonen 3 Massa 1
Race: Raikkonen
From the statistics, (over 75% of Spanish GPs won by the polesitter) you'd have to assume that whoever got pole position was most likely to win the race. It would be interesting to know which of Massa and Raikkonen got the optimum Ferrari strategy and who had to settle for the next best thing. You'd assume Raikkonen. Kimi's improvement in qualifying form is making it look increasingly like Ferrari Game Over before half the season is over. Massa needs to do something quickly before becoming the next Rubens Barrichello (amiable small Brazilian who can be relied on to follow his team leader home, and talented enough to develop his own set-up options).

The Safety Cars made it look closer than it really was in Spain, but Ferrari look to be a good 0.4 quicker than anyone else over a lap.

BMW
Season: Heidfeld 1 Kubica 3
Race: Kubica
Robert Kubica looked like he was going to stick his BMW on the front row during qualifying, but failed when it came to Q3. It was only a poor start that kept him off the podium. Nick Heidfeld did nothing at all wrong, but fell victim to Safety Car Lottery.

Renault
Season: Alonso 4 Piquet 0
Race: Alonso
Fernando Alonso's race was a triumphant return to the front and his nearly-pole lap one of the best you'll see all season. Suddenly all the frets and worries and niggles were gone. Interviewed afterwards you could see he was like a man who'd had a huge weight lifted off his shoulders. Nelson Piquet did incredibly well to stay as close in qualifying for as long as he did, but the early spin will have done him no favours at all. However the times are good. Patience from Flavio worked with Heikki last season and Nelsinho, guided by a far better example than Fisichella should prosper.

Williams
Season: Rosberg 3 Nakajima 1
Race: Rosberg
Difficult to call this one as Nakajima did a much better job in qualifying than Rosberg. Nico made amends off the line, though, making the most gains through the traffic and overtaking his team-mate in the process. Had he kept going he would probably have ended up with Jenson Button's 6th place.

Toyota
Season: Trulli 4 Glock 0
Race: Trulli
Jarno Trulli is putting a sizeable gap between himself and Timo Glock in qualifying, which on a lot of tracks this year will be a major headache for the Toyota team. At a place that is so well known to them all - such as Barcelona - you really ought to be within three tenths. Glock's attempts to pass Coulthard in the race were hopeless. If you can't qualify well, then at least you can make up for it with great starts or great race craft. Glock hasn't really demonstrated any of these skills so far.

Red Bull
Season: Webber 3 Coulthard 1
Race: Webber
The battle of the old gits looked to be a tight one at the Circuit de Catalunya as David Coulthard popped in the second fastest time in Saturday morning practice. Why they didn't stick him out on the softer tyre for his second run is a question Adrian Newey will be asking himself all the way to Turkey. Eliminated in Q1 he had time and leisure to watch his team-mate qualify for Q3 and claim good points in the race. David Coulthard's car seems to be a bit of a magnet for other cars at the moment. This race it was Timo Glock who became attracted to it and wanted to rub bodywork - though how Stewards could put it down to a racing accident when Glock seemed intent on making it a demolition derby is anybody's guess

Honda
Season: Barrichello 2 Button 2
Race: Barrichello
Rubens edged it in qualifying and neither driver made up ground at the start. There is no doubt that 'the Brawn effect' is showing up in the team's performance, but I'd be interested to know if it was the same lollypop guy who let Rubens out into the path of Fisichella's incoming Force India (hence the lost pit lane nose) that messed up Jenson's pit-stop in Melbourne.

Toro Rosso
Season: Vettel 2 Bourdais 2
Race: Bourdais
Yet again Vettel was the victim of somebody else's accident - the likeable German had nowhere to go when Sutil spun in front of him.

Force-India
Season: Sutil 0 Fisichella 4
Race: Fisichella
The renaissance of Giancarlo Fisichella in 2008 is a wonder to behold. Though the team had high hopes of getting into Q2 this will have to wait till later in the year. But with the rate of progress at Mike Gascoyne's team, it will happen. Sutil has been forced into making unwise moves off the start to keep up (shades of the early races last year).

Super Aguri
Season: Sato 1 Davidson 3
Race: Davidson
Davidson seemed very pleased with himself to have beaten Taku in qualifying, but then again, that's probably all he's aiming for in 2008 - and avoiding the P.45.

McLaren
Season: Hamilton 3 Kovalainen 1
Race: Hamilton
Lewis outqualified Heikki and managed to stay in front of him at the start - though some adept jinking from Kovalainen kept his front wing intact as Lewis decided to go round the inside of Kubica just as Heikki tried the same idea. The Finn was falling back from Lewis' pace when his front left decided it had had enough for the afternoon and we all saw the accident.

It's hard to know what that gravel is actually for, because it didn't take any speed off the car. Long grass might be a bit more interesting to take speed off the car - or as Jackie Stewart found one year at Silverstone - wheat.

Golden Arse
Has to go to ITV's pit lane man-chaser Louise Goodman for coming across like a David Walliams character from Little Britain. Louise was talking about Kimi Raikkonen's good luck before the race and Ferrari's ever-relaxed Stefano Domenicali was explaining how there is an Italian saying where basically you touch your knob for good luck. Now being the professional that he is Stefano knew that he couldn't say that in front of a live TV audience (David Coulthard and Mark Webber take note - it is possible, even in your second language) so he said "we touch somewhere I can't mention").

To which the purring 40-something Louise giggled "Ooh I like the sound of that better."

Or perhaps she thought the place he couldn't mention was Lewis Hamilton's butt.

Star of the Race
Hamilton 1
Raikkonen 1
Massa 1
Alonso 1

Overtaking Move of the Race

Kovalainen 1
Raikkonen1
Heidfeld 1

Driver Most Likely To Be Replaced Before The End of the Season
Last race in brackets

1. Piquet (2)
2.Nakajima (1)
3.Glock (entry)
4.Sutil (3)

Andrew Davies